Telephone Therapy Helps Treat Depression, Study Finds

There’s been a massive migration from face to face therapy to remote counseling for a while now. Telephone therapy has also been gaining popularity a lot lately, as people start to understand its benefits over traditional ways in which counseling used to take place.

More individuals are gaining increased trust in the innovative healthcare systems, and remote counseling is one of them. We’re living in the era of digitalizing the world, and telehealth medicine is riding the wave and attracting more enthusiasts.

People are showing increased trust in such new ways of benefiting from therapy, and this is boosted by the surging clinical evidence.

Telephone therapy is beneficial for patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s

For instance, a new study is revealing how phone therapy can lessen the symptomatology of depression in individuals who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

This fantastic study is called “Telephone-based cognitive behavioral therapy for depression in Parkinson disease,” and it was published in Neurology.

It’s important to note the fact that almost half of the patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s are also experiencing depression, and this makes their lives even harder than what the physical symptomatology of the disease already does for a patient.

“The psychological complications of Parkinson’s disease have a greater impact on the quality of life and overall functioning than the motor symptoms of the disease,” according to Roseanne Dobkin, PhD, a professor at Rutgers University and study co-author.

In a recent press release, she continued and explained that if it’s left untreated, depression has the ability to boost both physical and cognitive decline.

The patient’s independence will end up being compromised and it will become more and more difficult for patients to manage their health.

Promising results via cognitive behavioral therapy over the phone

There are promising results in treating people with Parkinson’s via cognitive behavioral therapy. What CBT essentially does is break the patterns of negative thinking, and it supports patients in their difficult struggle of coping with everyday challenges.

Unfortunately, CBT is inaccessible for a lot of people due to the fact that it requires physically moving to see the therapist at their office.

Offering CBT via telephone rather than face to face can definitely help to overcome this massive obstacle, according to this latest study.